


Blood

by henghost



Category: ITZY (Band)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Enemies to Lovers, F/F, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Self-Harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-03
Updated: 2020-07-03
Packaged: 2021-03-05 01:35:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25056298
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/henghost/pseuds/henghost
Summary: In the middle of an argument Chaeryeong smacks Ryujin across the face.
Relationships: Lee Chaeryeong/Shin Ryujin
Kudos: 43





	Blood

In the middle of an argument Chaeryeong smacks Ryujin across the face. The noise is loud enough the other members turn around. Ryujin starts to cry. She’s holding her face but through the gaps in her fingers Chaeryeong can see the big strips of splotchy red. 

“Oh my god I’m so sorry,” says Chaeryeong.

Ryujin’s still crying.

Yeji comes up to them and says, “What happened?”

“I hit her,” says Chaeryeong, not quite believing it.

“What?”

“I didn’t mean to. I’m so sorry. Here, let me get some ice or something.”

Yeji puts her arms around Ryujin, who by now has collapsed to the floor due to the weeping, and Chaeryeong scurries into the kitchen. What they’d been arguing about wasn’t important. The gist of it was: Ryujin was teasing her about the way she’d been acting around this guy, and Chaeryeong told her to stop, and she didn’t stop. They’d been yelling for about an hour before the slap. She really didn’t mean to do it. 

She puts a few ice cubes in a dish towel and wraps them up and returns to the scene of the crime and hands it to Yeji who hands it to Ryujin who is still too caught up in her sobbing to apply it to the wound herself, and so Yeji has to do it for her. 

“Maybe you should just go to bed,” says Yeji to Chaeryeong.

“Yeah,” says Chaeryeong. It’s only nine p.m. She goes to her room. She crawls under the covers still in her clothes. She left her phone in the front room but retrieving it is obviously out of the question right now. If she listens closely she can still hear the sounds of Ryujin crying, and she starts to cry herself, getting her sheets all wet.

Maybe an hour later Yeji comes into her room without knocking and says to her, “That was obviously unacceptable, Chaeryeong. Jesus!” And then she leaves and slams the door behind her. 

When she’s sure everyone else is asleep she creeps out of her room and finds her phone and listens to sad music for the rest of the night.

#

Once, before their debut, the Company made them all do a medical check. “Like we’re prized cattle,” said Ryujin. This was a period when the two were getting along well. Very well in fact. Sometimes it was like that. Other times, well….

Anyway it was a whole ordeal. They had to wear these hospital gowns, which Ryujin was angry about as well. She kept her hands pressed to her sides to cover the strip of thigh left open to the air. 

A nurse came and measured their heights, and Chaeryeong grinned when hers was a centimeter higher than Ryujin’s. 

“I’m still older,” said Ryujin.

“By like a month,” said Chaeryeong.

“That’s by like a month,  _ unnie _ .”

“Fuck off,  _ unnie. _ ”

Then they had to get blood drawn. Chaeryeong looked on as the nurse jabbed the needle into the crook of Ryujin’s arm and as the little vial filled with red. It nauseated her. Blood always has. But Ryujin got this weird look in her eye. Like she was entranced.

“What’s your blood type, Chaeryeong?”

“B.”

“Same.”

“You know what that means.”

“We’re both passionate by nature.”

“I was going to say egotistic.”

When it was Chaeryeong’s turn her face went green, and Ryujin laughed at her. She said, “Are you like this every month?”

#

Chaeryeong is on the couch when Ryujin comes into the living room early in the morning, and when she stands up Ryujin jumps. 

“You scared me,” says Ryujin.

“Sorry,” says Chaeryeong. “I’m really sorry. About everything. I couldn’t sleep. I felt so bad.”

“I forgive you. It’s not a big deal.”

Ryujin yawns and opens the fridge. She’s wearing these flannel pajamas. Chaeryeong looks at her in despair. In fury. She’s still so mad. Ryujin looks so good, so early in the morning. 

“It is a big deal,” says Chaeryeong. “I hit you.”

“You’ve hit me before. And I was asking for it, really.”

“Yeah.”

Ryujin sips from a glass of orange juice, and then there’s a bit of pulp stuck to her upper lip, and Chaeryeong says, “You look good today, Ryujin,” which is true, although part of her wishes it wasn’t.

“Thanks.”

Ryujin sits at the dining table and Chaeryeong can see her puffy eyes, the faintest red handprint on her cheek, and her anger melts into confusion, which in turn morphs back into anger. She doesn’t know how to feel. She thinks maybe life would be easier if she were Ryujin, and if Ryujin were her. It doesn’t make sense. It isn’t fair.

A little later Ryujin takes a shower, and when she’s sure no one’s watching Chaeryeong puts her ear to the bathroom door and she can hear what sounds like sobbing. Maybe it’s her imagination, but still she gets a pang of self-loathing for making Ryujin feel that way. Then she thinks she shouldn’t feel bad for giving Ryujin what she deserved.

The contradiction won’t go away. 

#

A little later they’re all in the car on the way to shoot a commercial for a new mobile game. Chaeryeong is in the back seat, pressed against Yeji, who eyes her disdainfully. Ryujin’s sitting directly in front of her. At one point Chaeryeong leans forward and sees Ryujin bent over her phone, and what’s on her phone is a picture of someone’s wrist with reddish scars running horizontal across it. Ryujin doesn’t scroll past it, doesn’t exit out of the app, simply stares at the cuts in someone’s skin. It sends a tingle of dread down Chaeryeong’s spine. 

At the shoot, while the production crew is setting up, Yeji pulls Chaeryeong into the bathroom and says to her, “I’m still mad at you.”

“I know,” says Chaeryeong.

“No. You don’t know. That’s the thing. Ryujin acts like she doesn’t care. But she does. She really does. More than you know.”

“She acts like she’s better than everyone.”

“Oh and you’re so modest?”

“Sorry. I know. You’re right.”

“What happened? You two used to get along so well.”

What did happen? Chaeryeong says nothing.

“Look,” says Yeji, “the thing is that you need to cool it. You don’t know what you’re doing. Trust me. You don’t know what you’re doing to her.”

For the commercial they have to wear these fantasy costumes. They put Chaeryeong in a skimpy elf outfit. In one of the scenes she has to stab Ryujin’s character, who’s dressed up in flowing mage’s robes. She plunges the retracting blade into her gullet and a man dressed all in black pours a bucket of fake blood over the “wound,” some of which gets on her hand.

Her hand. She can still feel Ryujin’s warm face against her hand, then the sting afterward. She washes it until it’s raw, but still the sensation won’t leave.

On the way out she asks Ryujin, “What was that picture you were looking at on the way here?”

“Oh,” says Ryujin. “This girl. Maybe you’ve heard of her. She cut herself. One of her colleagues was bullying her and she cut herself.”

“That’s awful.”

“It’s awful but it’s true. She posted the picture online to prove it was true. I understand why she did it.”

“I’m sorry again for hitting you. I shouldn’t have done that.”

“I already forgave you.”

“I haven’t forgiven myself.”

“You’re always so dramatic.”

“And you aren’t?”

“Fair enough.”

#

What happened?

They used to make fun of their teachers. They used to buy each other soy lattes. They used to collapse into one another’s arms after the hours and hours and hours of grueling practice. 

But now there’s violence involved. Now there’s confusion. Now the only thing she knows for certain is that sometimes when she looks at Ryujin blood bubbles up and pricks against the back of her face and her knuckles go white and her vision goes red.

Maybe it’s that at a certain point it became impossible to avoid the fact that Ryujin is perfect. She’s so good at everything. She never worries about how she looks — she doesn’t have to. And maybe the gratitude Chaeryeong had once felt for being so close to all that had soured into resentment. Resentment for the fact that she isn’t Ryujin.

And perhaps that’s why when Dae-ho, who she’s known since she was in middle school and who is tall and handsome (although not exactly her type), came up to her and started to flirt idly and thereby make her blush, that it was so frustrating when Ryujin teased her over it, like she’s never been nervous, like she’s never experienced any insecurity, like she has incredible contempt for anyone who isn’t her. 

Frustrating enough that it might in fact not be unreasonable to respond with physical violence. 

But on the other hand, maybe she doesn’t want to be Ryujin. Maybe she only wants to be close to her, close the way they’ve always been close, wants it so badly it makes her insides rush and thrum. And maybe she’s mistaken that feeling for fury.

#

That night Yeji makes the five of them spend the evening together. “To strengthen the bonds that have recently deteriorated,” she says, whatever that means. They put on a movie. A gritty drama about vampires. 

But after the scene where the swarthy vampire plunges his fangs into the neck of the female lead, Ryujin stands up and leaves. Yeji whispers, “I’ll go talk to her.” 

Chaeryeong says, “Let me.”

She stands and walks to the other end of their puny dormitory. The vampire goes, “Now you’re mine forever!” and cackles.

She hears soft weeping from inside Ryujin’s room, and steadily she pulls the door open. The inside is dimly lit, and Ryujin is sitting on the ground with her jeans around her knees, and in her hand is a razor, and a line of red is dripping down her leg.

Before she can scream, Ryujin says, “Chaeryeong!” in a hoarse whisper. “Wait!” And she scrambles to put her pants back on. She tells Chaeryeong to close the door behind her and she numbly obeys.

Ryujin puts the razor in a drawer of her dresser then steps over and grabs Chaeryeong by the wrists and says, “You have the wrong idea.”

Behind her Chaeryeong can hear muffled screams. “Do I?”

“Come here. Sit down.”

Chaeryeong laughs. “Okay.” And they sit on the floor.

“It’s not what you’re thinking,” says Ryujin.

“Let me see your leg,” says Chaeryeong.

“What? No.”

“Ryujin, take off your pants and let me see your leg.”

“Pervert,” says Ryujin, but she does. The cut is already beginning to clot. It’s a dark and ugly red. And now close up Chaeryeong sees it is flanked on either side by craggy white scars and other, newer wounds, all around the curve of her hip. The sight of blood makes her heart beat faster. 

“I didn’t want you to see,” says Ryujin.

“Well.”

“I didn’t want you to worry.”

“Too fucking late.”

“It’s not a big deal.”

“Let me get a band-aid.”

“No. I don’t want anyone else to worry, either.”

“Yeji knows, doesn’t she?”

“Basically.”

Chaeryeong grits her teeth. “It’s because of me, isn’t it?”

“No. Why would you say that?”

“Then why?”

“I don’t know. It’s just that, I don’t know, sometimes I can’t get thoughts out of my head. Sometimes the only thing that can distract me is, like, pain.”

“Jesus.”

“Well.”

Chaeryeong stands up and paces around the meager room. She feels like she might throw up. She goes over to Ryujin’s dresser and finds the razor and holds it up and says, “I’m confiscating this.”

“I have more.”

“What thoughts? What thoughts can’t you get out of your head?”

“I don’t know. All sorts.”

“Thoughts of me?”

“Sometimes.”

She goes over to Ryujin and hugs her tight. She says, “I’m so sorry. I’m such an awful person. I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault.”

“It is my fault. I’ve been so awful to you.”

“They aren’t thoughts of how awful you are.”

“What?”

“They’re thoughts of how kind you’ve been to me. Or how pretty you are. Or how I’ve pushed you away. Or how you’ll end up with Dae-ho and not me.”

Chaeryeong lets go of Ryujin and steps back and looks at her, bewildered. Ryujin’s crying. Her face is in her hands. Chaeryeong has seen her bleed. She has seen her barcode of scars. She puts her hand on Ryujin’s cheek, tenderly this time, and she feels the veins in her neck pulse. There’s that feeling again. Anger? It’s not anger. She grabs Ryujin’s face with her other hand and kisses her pouting mouth. 

Afterward she says, “Sorry. That was inappropriate.” But then Ryujin is kissing her. They only stop when they hear the doorknob turn, and they rip away from each other an instant before Yeji steps into the room and says, “Is everything okay?”

#

The next night, after some more kissing, Chaeryeong says, “You have to tell someone. I can’t do it for you. Neither can Yeji.”

“It’s not a problem anymore.”

“Yes it is. It is still a very big problem.”

“I’ll tell someone. I’ll talk to my mom about it.”

“When?”

“Tomorrow.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

“Ryujin, you would never, you know….”

“What? Slit my wrists? No, I wouldn’t.”

“Okay, but if you were ever bleeding out for whatever reason, I would save you. We’re the same blood type. You wouldn’t have a choice.”

“It’s like we’re related. It’s like we’re sisters.”   


“Surely we’re closer than that.”

**Author's Note:**

> For the record, I'd written most of this (including the self-harm stuff) before the thing with Kwon Mina. But then afterward I thought how could I not make some kind of allusion to it. I apologize if it came across as in any way insensitive -- that wasn't my intention. It's truly an awful situation. 
> 
> Also, it's true about their blood types.


End file.
